8 more weekends to go...

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours is never relaxing, and is full of visiting family and heading from one house to the next to visit relatives. We ended up coming back last night instead of today just to get a little relaxing in, and I think that was a very smart decision! (Of course we didn't actually relax this afternoon - I cleaned all afternoon downstairs while Brent worked upstairs all afternoon! But, we were very productive!)

We had nice Thanksgivings with the family. We "revealed" the baby's name to our families via making them guess. We printed out all the letters to her first and middle name and made them figure out. She doesn't have a lot of letters to her name, so it wasn't an easy task! Brent's brother was the big winner at his house, and I think my mom was the winner at mine. There was also much talk of the "baby in Aunt Rachel's tummy". Pretty much every time we came and went my niece wanted to know if we could go to the hospital so I could have my baby. And of course Pippin was always a big hit everywhere. Personally, I found his shining moment to be his impromptu roll in unidentified poop about two minutes before we had the car loaded to come home Saturday night. Ugh. So he got a quick and impromptu bath.

And now tomorrow starts December! It's hard to believe that it's already the holiday season. I can't believe it's already time to start the assembly line of Christmas cards and holiday baking! The next few weeks have a ton of activities for us - between holiday parties & open houses, baby showers, another baby prep class, & doctor's appointments there's hardly a spare day at all! And starting tomorrow when people ask the billion dollar question of "how much longer" the answer will be "next month!" Yikes! And right now Brent's putting together yet another piece of "baby equipment" - our new glider! All exciting stuff.

I still work out most days at the gym, I usually make it about 3-4 days a week with all the other stuff going on. There's LOADS of stares, and like most places I go it's hard to get in and out without the 20 questions people like to play with the pregnant - "when are you due", "what are you having", "what's the name", "how are you feeling", and "what have you been craving". I end up walking about 3 miles a day now, not the 5.5 I used to get, but not so shabby for a 31-week preggo.

Alrighty, that's the update from here. Here's a couple of pics from our holiday:

Niece #2 spent much time staring at my stomach - and then decided to take her baby doll and stuff it up her shirt to be like me. (Although she spent a lot of the weekend explaining that everyone else just had food in their stomach but I had a baby.)













Here's the "new mom" with her lovely baby:













Another of the top questions we're asked these day is "how is Pippin with kids", the answer is not half bad. He's very patient and pretty much lets them do whatever - take his toys, tug on him, etc. He gets the occasional push/jump in on them, but 98% of the time he's actually pretty gentle.








But when he sees us start packing up - there's no way he's going to be left behind!












Happy Holidays!